[CQ-Contest] History of Low Power Category

[Tom Osborne]

I think there were quite a few of us working QRP back in the day, not 
because we even knew what QRP meant, but most Novices ran little low 
power rigs as that was what was available to us.  If you were really 
well healed, you had a 'Novice Gallon' - the Viking Ranger, which ran 75 
watts (which is what we were allowed to run).  I started out with a 6L6 
homebrew popsicle stick rig and then graduated to a Heathkit AT-1 at 25 
watts input, with 1 crystal at 7178.5.

Like Tod said, we were QRP and didn't even know it and didn't care, we 
were just having fun :-)  73

Tom W7WHY



On 9/16/2014 9:25 AM, Tod Olson wrote:
>
> The selection of QRP power went through something similar but there were
> many fewer QRP guys at that time. Actually, those of us who had started with
> crystal oscillators and 6V6 final tubes [ maybe 300 volts times 30 ma or 9
> watts input) never gave much thought to the fact that we were running ³QRP².
> We just worked as many guys as we could hear and could hear us!